Orthopeful

Through user interviews, I uncovered that choosing a new dentist is far more challenging than simply searching online—especially for users with vision disabilities, who often encounter inaccessible interfaces and overwhelming information. Rather than treating these as isolated usability issues, I investigated how a single accessibility-first product could reduce friction across the entire journey.

Key pain points included:

1. Accessibility & Convenience — Difficulty locating nearby providers, inaccessible contact information, complicated scheduling, slow appointment confirmations, missing digital forms, and limited communication options.

2. Insurance & Cost Transparency — Unclear insurance acceptance, hidden procedure pricing, and limited financing information.

3. Trust & Credibility — Unverified reviews, missing provider qualifications, and little evidence of professional experience.

4. Patient Education — Few accessible resources to help users understand procedures or make informed decisions before appointments.

5. User Experience — Confusing navigation, information overload, and unnecessary barriers—such as complex authentication—for completing simple tasks like booking an appointment.

These findings became the foundation for Orthopeful: a voice-enabled, accessibility-first experience that simplifies how every user discovers, evaluates, and connects with trusted dental providers.

Yet most healthcare platforms overwhelm users with fragmented information, poor accessibility, and experiences that make comparing providers unnecessarily difficult. Users with vision disabilities are especially underserved, revealing a broader opportunity to redesign dental discovery through an accessibility-first experience that builds confidence, transparency, and trust from the very first interaction.

Mercedes' journey revealed that finding a new dentist isn't simply a search problem—it is a confidence problem made significantly harder by vision impairment. As a freelance photographer who experiences temporary visual fatigue, she relies on products that reduce cognitive effort instead of adding to it. Every step of her experience exposed an opportunity to make healthcare more accessible, intuitive, and trustworthy.

Her journey begins with uncertainty. She needs quality dental care while traveling for work, but existing healthcare platforms force her to navigate cluttered interfaces, inconsistent provider information, and inaccessible booking experiences. Rather than feeling supported, she is left questioning whether she can trust the information she's seeing or complete the process efficiently.

As she researches providers, her frustrations shift from accessibility to confidence. Hidden pricing, unclear insurance coverage, limited provider credentials, and overwhelming amounts of information make it difficult to compare dentists and make an informed decision. These aren't isolated usability issues—they create hesitation at every decision point.

I approached these findings by designing with Mercedes' disability as the primary constraint, rather than an edge case. Instead of asking how to make an existing experience accessible, I asked how accessibility could become the foundation of the product. This perspective led to prioritizing voice-first interactions, simplified navigation, high-contrast interfaces, transparent provider information, and guided decision-making that reduces cognitive load while empowering users to remain independent.

By the end of her journey, Mercedes transitions from frustration to confidence—not because the process became shorter, but because every interaction was intentionally designed to remove uncertainty. This journey map reinforced a principle that guides my work: when products are designed to serve users with disabilities first, they create clearer, more trustworthy, and more inclusive experiences for everyone.

The user flow maps the end-to-end decision-making journey I pursued within Orthopeful. Demonstrating how users can discover the right dental provider through multiple intuitive pathways. Whether searching by dental specialty, treatment category, or nearby location, every route converges into a unified experience that presents provider information through both visual and voice-enabled interactions. The architecture prioritizes accessibility, reduces decision fatigue, and streamlines appointment booking by guiding users from discovery to confirmation with minimal friction and clear decision points.

The low-fidelity wireframes established the foundation for Orthopeful's accessibility-first experience by prioritizing Voice User Interface (VUI) interactions over traditional touch-based navigation. Rather than designing another visually dense healthcare application, I explored how AI could become an intelligent assistant that minimizes visual demand while enabling users with vision disabilities to independently discover, compare, and connect with trusted dental providers.

Every screen was intentionally simplified to reduce cognitive load, allowing users to complete tasks through a combination of natural voice commands, spoken guidance, and minimal touch interactions. The wireframes focused on validating the product's core information architecture, conversational user flows, and AI-assisted decision-making before introducing visual styling.

1. Voice-First Navigation - to guide users through provider discovery using natural language instead of complex menus.

2. Minimal Visual Demand - through simplified layouts, large touch targets, and uncluttered interfaces that reduce eye strain.

3. AI-Assisted Search - allowing users to find providers by specialty, insurance, location, symptoms, or treatment needs using conversational prompts.

4. Accessible Provider Comparison - with AI summarizing credentials, pricing, insurance coverage, reviews, and office availability through voice playback.

5. Guided Appointment Booking - where the AI assistant confirms each step, reducing uncertainty and preventing navigation errors.

6. Cross-Platform Consistency - by designing parallel experiences for both iOS and Android while respecting each platform's native interaction patterns and accessibility guidelines.

Designing at the wireframing stage allowed me to validate the experience from the perspective of users with low vision before investing in high-fidelity visuals. By treating accessibility as the product's foundation—not an enhancement—I ensured every interaction supported independence, confidence, and ease of use. The result was a scalable framework that demonstrates how voice-enabled AI can transform healthcare discovery into an inclusive experience for users of all visual abilities.

Orthopeful's design system was built to deliver a consistent, scalable, and accessibility-first experience across both iOS and Android. I developed a comprehensive library of reusable components, design variables, and design tokens—including color palettes, typography, spacing, and interaction states—to create a unified foundation for future development.

Accessibility guided every design decision. Through conversations with a legally blind acquaintance, I learned how light sensitivity significantly impacts many users with vision disabilities. Rather than treating dark mode as an optional preference, I designed Orthopeful as a dark-theme-first experience, reducing glare and visual fatigue while improving readability through high-contrast color combinations, large typography, and clear interactive elements. This approach ensured the interface remained comfortable, inclusive, and intuitive, demonstrating my commitment to designing with users' needs at the center—not as an afterthought.

Transitioning from low-fidelity wireframes to high-fidelity prototypes required balancing accessibility with visual appeal. Designing exclusively for a dark-themed experience proved especially challenging, as early concepts using standard black and gray interfaces felt visually flat and uninviting—even for users with vision disabilities.

To validate my assumptions, I used a color contrast generator to test accessibility and readability across multiple color combinations. Rather than relying on conventional dark mode palettes, I incorporated Orthopeful's primary and secondary brand colors to create a richer, more polished interface that maintained WCAG-compliant contrast while reducing glare and eye strain. The result was a distinctive visual system that demonstrated accessibility and thoughtful branding can coexist without compromising either usability or aesthetics.

Designing for WCAG accessibility challenged me to rethink how I validated inclusive experiences. Without prior experience testing for Color Blindness and Low Contrast Sensitivity, I relied on accessibility plugins to objectively evaluate every interface. My initial audit failed—a reminder that even non-production elements, like visible design guides, can affect accessibility testing. After removing these overlays, I reran the validation and achieved a passing result for color blindness compliance. This experience reinforced an important lesson: accessibility isn't something to verify at the end—it's a design discipline that demands continuous testing, iteration, and accountability throughout the product development process.

Before conducting usability testing with my legally blind participant, I wanted the prototype to better reflect how an accessibility-first product should behave in a real-world experience. To accomplish this, I integrated Voice-Insert ElevenLabs Voice & Voice Sound Effects to simulate a voice-first assistant. Rather than requiring users to manually activate screen narration, the prototype automatically played contextual voice guidance as each screen opened—creating an experience that more closely resembled an AI-powered assistant. This allowed me to evaluate not only the interface itself, but also whether proactive voice guidance reduced cognitive effort and helped users navigate the product more independently.

To evaluate Orthopeful from the perspective of its primary audience, I conducted two usability sessions with a legally blind acquaintance. I intentionally approached the first session without supervision, asking her to navigate the prototype independently so I could observe an authentic first-time experience rather than influence her interactions. The outcome was unexpected: she reported that the voice guidance wasn't working, despite my own successful tests before sharing the prototype.

Wanting to understand the issue firsthand, I conducted a second session while observing remotely over the phone. This time, the problem became immediately clear. The voice integration functioned only as a screen narrator—it read interface content aloud but could not interpret or respond to voice commands. The experience exposed a critical limitation of the prototype and reinforced an important lesson: narration alone does not create an accessible, voice-first experience.

Although the testing uncovered shortcomings rather than successes, it became one of the most valuable insights of the project. It shifted my thinking beyond traditional accessibility features and sparked a new design question: How can conversational AI evolve from simply reading interfaces to actively understanding and executing user intent? That question now drives the next iteration of Orthopeful's vision for truly hands-free healthcare navigation.

The accessibility testing revealed that simulated voice narration created a misleading user experience. Rather than empowering my legally blind participant, the prototype established an expectation of conversational interaction that the technology couldn't deliver. To avoid validating an experience that wasn't authentic, I removed the voice integration from the prototype.

The project has since shifted into a research-driven phase focused on the feasibility of true conversational AI. I'm investigating how AI, speech recognition, and voice interfaces could work together to create a hands-free experience that not only narrates content, but also understands and executes user commands. Bringing this vision to market would require close collaboration with AI engineers and developers, reinforcing that designing an exceptional user experience often means recognizing where design ends and engineering innovation begins.

Orthopeful has evolved from an accessibility-first concept into a validated product opportunity with a clear technical direction. The next phase focuses on bridging the gap between UX design and engineering by exploring conversational AI that can understand, process, and execute natural voice commands—not simply narrate interface content.

Future work includes partnering with AI engineers and mobile developers to evaluate speech recognition models, conversational AI frameworks, and accessibility APIs capable of delivering a truly hands-free experience for users with vision disabilities. Once a functional voice assistant is integrated, the product will undergo another round of usability testing with vision-impaired participants to validate task completion, usability, and overall user confidence.

Ultimately, my goal is to demonstrate that accessibility should be a catalyst for innovation—not a compliance checklist—and that designing for users with disabilities can produce more intuitive, inclusive experiences for everyone.